


Concerning Deepground

by TwoCatsTailoring



Series: Meta Collection [4]
Category: Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Deepground, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, archived from twocatstailoring blog, deepground meta, explaining inconsistancies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 18:37:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16792492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoCatsTailoring/pseuds/TwoCatsTailoring
Summary: A meta essay about Deepground, how I see it all fitting together with the original game content, and generally trying to make sense out of a patched together franchise.





	Concerning Deepground

**Author's Note:**

> Archived from twocatstailoring tumblr.

I’ve seen, over the past year and a bit, a lot of stuff going around about how Dirge of Cerberus doesn’t seem to fit properly into the lines of the compilation. Perhaps I am new and stupid still, having played and finished Dirge (and enjoyed it!) well before I ever finished OG, but I can see how it fits. It is a twisted, convoluted thing that runs deep into the psyche and relies on a lot of willful ignorance and voluntary inaction as well as no small part of luck.

So, first and foremost, I don’t think Deepground was a secret at all. From my understanding of it, Deepground started just as a medical division, used for treating injured SOLDIERs. Over time it morphed into a program using those injured SOLDIERs for experiments which eventually brought about the Deepground soldiers that we see as ‘ground troops’ in Dirge. 

I believe that this was done on the orders of ShinRa Sr., not out of fear of losing his position either within the company or the world, but out of a desire to be able to continually use greater and greater force against anyone who would challenge his rule. He was not so foolish as to think that he would never be challenged - he’s not an idiot - but he does not want to lose any more money than necessary. After all, there’s terrorists trying to infiltrate the ranks of his bodygurads, shoot at him in public, and trying to blow up reactors. He understands that there is opposition and there’s only one thing to do about that.

Crush it.

It makes good business sense, then to have a force of men and women altered first by mako treatments, their skills in battle honed to perfection, then their bodies altered yet again to maximize their strength and resilience. If you can do with 2 Deepground operatives what it would take 4 SOLDIERs to do, well. You’ve just halved your upkeep outlay as well as any sort of pensions or death benefits. It’s all about making money because money is control.

But while ShinRa Sr. was no idiot, he was also not a scientist. He had no need or desire to be, that I can find anywhere. Therefore, as he had a business to run, the scientists who worked for his company were given whatever they asked for. After all, they were producing tangible results for a boss who was not wildly conversant (or concerned) about their methods. ShinRa Sr. didn’t care much about the _how_ so long as there were results that were useful to him.

We know that at least one of the scientists, and let’s just be really honest here for a moment: most likely all of them, did some pretty unethical things. Yes, the human experimentations were backed and approved of and ordered by higher-ups. But these are brilliant men and women we are talking about. Hojo, Gast, Hollander, Cresent, Valentine? They are all really fucking smart. Really smart people with fuzzy lines around ethics are going to take risks. Step over the line. Call it going above and beyond in their jobs, but when the only people who know what you are doing are your peers and they either leave because they do not approve, or keep their mouths shut, or help you do what you want to do?

Seriously, who isn’t going to take a loophole opportunity?

So, loophole and a lack of professional, ethical oversight in the science department allows a lot of extra activity to take place. Nero being a notable example, as well as Weiss and Rosso (who was, if I remember correctly, a SOLDIER who came in and was mercilessly experimented on until she went mad.) Azul went willingly, wanting to be more and more powerful (dream come true there, folks) and Shelke was a child.

Sidetrack about Shelke for a second - she was a child. Nine or ten years old who was abducted from her sister’s care after their parents died. She was a child, forced in to mako treatments, her mind broken, her DNA toyed with to the point that she will never physically age past a child. She was also the last of the Colored Tsviets to join, which should tell you about how lacking the oversight had become within and outside of the Deepground project. Gaia is a horrible world to live in in a lot of ways, but I think that Shelke’s story is, out of all the horrors, the worst. 

Shinra EPC is a massive, global corporation that is really quite out of control by the time of the OG. It is cumbersome, unweildly, and I honestly feel that at the beginning of OG, ShinRa Sr. really only knows what is happening in his own company via reports from his executives. What difference does that make? 

If that is all that he was relying on (and really it seemed like there were only about 5 of those who made any appearance in OG, but for the sake of argument let’s just say that there were ten all total) all of the information for a company that _supplied power to the entire planet_ (save Wutai) was filtering through those ten people who’s job it was to decide what was _important_ enough for ShinRa Sr. to know about. And I don’t care who you are, if you are working on something for someone as powerful as ShinRa Sr. you are NOT going to report on 'maybe’ or on anything that even remotely looks like a failure. You are not going to waste his time or risk your job. That’s not a smart business move.

So I believe that Deepground was ShinRa’s worst kept secret. Perhaps the average employee didn’t know exactly what was going on in there and didn’t know the details of what was being done, but I am confident that the 'super-SOLDIER program’ was something most people knew about. Some probably wrote it off as developmental, research, or maybe even still thought of it as a hospital situation. Point being, it wasn’t making waves as the next big thing so the masses didn’t give it much thought.

However, there are the Turks. Their job is to know and understand. They would know about Deepground. They would know of the successes and failures, would know about what was happening down below Reactor 0. They would also do nothing at all about it. What would be the point? Their job is to know for the sake of protecting ShinRa’s interests. The project is one that the President ordered, sanctioned, and approves of and the goal is to protect ShinRa’s interests. Why should they do anything at all about it?

The answer is, they shouldn’t. They just know and it is filed away as something that it in ShinRa’s best interest to keep safe, therefore it is allowed to continue without the Turks poking their nose too deeply into it. The Deepground project has the same goal as SOLDIER, why would they interfere?

Then all hell breaks loose. You know the drill. ShinRa begins to fall apart from within, things get hella crazy, Sephiroth, Jenova, Meterofall, Lifestream, Geostigma, etc. etc. Midgar collapses, sealing off Deepground from the rest of the world. They begin digging themselves out, but it is a long process, one that is aided by the fact that there are people who are, after the radiation levels clear a bit, digging in to ShinRa to find all the dirty secrets the company was keeping. 

Those people would be the first victims to feed the Lifestream to wake up Omega. At that point, Deepground is out and about and causing trouble and there’s where Dirge picks up. 

I’ve left something out I’m sure, but this is how I see it all fitting together. It was no great secret and with the collapse of Midgar as well as the panic and global crises afterwards, I can’t imagine that anyone was giving much thought to the 'development division’ or the 'research station’ that got crushed under Reactor 0.


End file.
